


my name is leijon, for we are many

by sajere1



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beforus Ancestors, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, gratuitous use of character titles instead of names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 10:05:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6901537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They called her the Huntress. She was claws and fangs and steps that echoed, and she had eyes like a little girl who saw too much and walked away with all of it. The Delphine asked her what she was hunting and she smiled, nails and mind sharp, but soft, only for her.</p>
<p>They do not call her the Huntress anymore.</p>
<p>[or: the story of nepeta and terezi, amongst others, from beforus, in the form of a troll bedtime story]</p>
            </blockquote>





	my name is leijon, for we are many

A long, long time ago, on the outskirts of a forest larger than any other, in a place where the sun sets like an angry red burn across the sky, a teal grub was found next to a meteor, no breeding cavern in sight. The grub had eaten nothing for days and was crying, on the verge of starvation, when a small bull lusus found her. The lusus kept her alive for weeks on the berries and leaves of the forest, until finally the grub ate her fill and began to pupate. Finally able to pause, the bull gathered what food he could for when the grub reemerged so that she would not starve again before it set off to a nearby town for assistance. When the lusus returned – this time with the village elder and his apprentice – they found the small troll fully emerged and asleep, gorged on the rations she had gathered and stuffed full.

The village was small, but colorful in all the ways that matter to children, with a plethora of traders that stopped for rest on their travels between major cities and no end to fascinating local fauna. Though the child lacked the psionic abilities to learn under the elder with his apprentice, she had gifts of foreknowledge without precedent, earning her a place at his home and a status as the village soothsayer, known for the title that travelers spread to the other villages: the Delphine. She and the apprentice – who would later be known to Beforan history as the Delegate, the well-known general during Her Highness’ rise to power – were raised as a pair, together from childhood onwards with the devotion only those destined to be moirails can attain: he, embittered by his psychic powers, his mind fractured and split in two, as if his personality was composed entirely of sentence fragments; and she, in the other direction, emboldened by her powers, her personality a splash of red on a grey world, a run-on developing for pages past its time. The two grew to adult age together, and, at the death of their teacher, became co-leaders of the village, serving their town through a mixture of their psychic powers.

Soon, news spread to the cities and outer villages of the two, regarding both the strength of their moiraillegiance and the power in their psionics; red and black suitors began to approach each week, eager to gain a part in the pair’s fame and devotion. However, each were turned away, all lacking a sincere interest in either troll, and the two learned to rely only on one another.

One day, at noon, when all reasonable trolls were safe in their homes, a highblood came to town. He bled heavily from a cut at his shoulder, and limped when he walked, but grinned the whole trek through the village streets, until – finally – he found the doorstep of the town elders and knocked on the door twice with his unhurt arm.

The Delegate had foreseen that someone would arrive during the day, and had been waiting at the door to send them away, but when he opened the door and found the man wounded, he could not bring himself to deny the helpless troll. Instead, the Delegate helped the mysterious highblood into the house and began to treat his wound.

“Who are you?” The Delegate asked.

There was a pause as the highblood gathered his strength. “I am the Reverend,” he said, and the Delegate’s hands went still out of shock. For when the Reverend spoke, he spoke in two voices, the first higher and softer and the second lower and louder; and immediately, the Delegate felt kindred with another whose soul had been split in two.

When the Delegate finished his ministrations, the Reverend stood to leave; but the Delegate pushed him back down to his seat, and instead began to fix him a meal. “Stay, until you are well,” the Delegate said, and any protests fell on deaf ears. “I will find you a place to stay near my home so that I may check on you.”

The next night, the Reverend was given shelter at an inn on the outskirts of the town, only a few minutes’ walk from the Delegate’s home; and the Reverend began to visit daily, even past a time when his wounds had ceased to bother him. And in the next weeks, as he saw suitors trying and failing to win the hearts of the elders, he became passionate in his anger.

The Reverend’s courting of the Delegate was of a different manner than the other suitors; where those who came from afar set their eyes on single quadrants, the Reverend’s relationship with the Delegate was characterized not by setting sights on matespritship or kismesistude, but by pure emotion. Their relationship was characterized by both concupiscent quadrants. The Reverend and the Delegate remained, for centuries past their separation, the models of vacillation; their alternations always in sync, and their devotion unmatched by any, except for the Delegate’s and Delphine’s own continued moiraillegiance.

Through the months, the suitors ceased their pilgrimage to the village, dissuaded by the Reverend’s defensiveness and the Delphine’s undeterred concupiscent chastity. Eventually, the visitors for the pair ceased altogether.

However, it soon came to pass that the Delphine, in her endless knowledge of potential futures, became aware of an incoming visitor. But not one who would stay in the town; indeed, not one who wanted to be noticed at all. Instead, the incoming troll, would settle herself in a cave next to the forest – as it happened, the cave that had been created by the meteor the Delphine had come to Beforus on. Within the week, the Delphine packed double rations and began the six-day trek to her birthplace, careful to keep her plans quiet from her moirail.

When the Delphine arrived at the cave, it was to find it empty; she had expected this. She sat in the center of the cave and fixed two servings of food. One, she set in front of herself; the other, she set across from her. She began to eat. She ate alone for ten minutes and twelve seconds exactly, the perfect amount of time for her to finish eating, and – just as she foresaw – at her completion, the visitor finally came out of the shadows of the cave and approached the food the Delphine offered her.

She was older than the Delphine – not significantly, but by at least three sweeps; her hair had the gray taint of someone significantly older. She was almost entirely covered, a black robe’s hood pulled up to cover the upper portion of her face. Her fingernails were long and grimy; all of her clothing carried an aura of dirt about it. Somehow, though, she seemed regal.

“You are the Huntress,” the Delphine said, when the Huntress finished her meal and set the bowl aside.

The Huntress smiled – a roguish smile, one that made Delphine’s heart pump faster in her chest. “I have not used that name in a long time.”

This was something the Delphine did not know. She was not used to not knowing things. “Then how should I refer to you?” she asked.

“I am called the Devourer,” the Devourer said, “for it is my life’s mission to take the hearts of unjust men and devour them whole.”

“What has brought you to our village?” the Delphine said. “Surely there is no man so unjust in our midst as to require such action.”

“Wish I that it were not so,” the Devourer replied. “And yet there is a man in your midst even now who has murdered, and would do so again in a moment should it benefit him. Beware, for the man you call the Reverend is evil twofold, and cannot be trusted.”

“Surely you are mistaken!” the Delphine said, leaning back in her shock. “The Reverend is the lover of my lover, and to hear such of him is an insult to my judgment and my abilities; surely, in the presence of two powerful psionics, he could not hide a secret such of this.”

“He is powerful,” the Devourer said, “more so than I realized for a long time. Listen – the Reverend was once my kismesis; we were engaged in romantic combat for many years; until finally, he crossed the line from romantic hate to cruelty and did the unforgivable. The Reverend, in a fit of madness, killed my moirail and made an attempt on my own life. I have been hunting him ever since. When the people call me the Huntress, it is he they call my prey; but for such a slight, I cannot simply kill him. He must receive justice.”

“It cannot be so,” the Delphine said, but even as she said the words she knew that what the Devourer said was true; and the Devourer seemed to know it, too, as she smiled sadly at the visiting troll. “I understand your need for vengeance. However, it would destroy my moirail to see the Reverend destroyed. He must face trial, but I cannot allow you to simply kill him.”

“He must face the consequences of what he has done,” the Devourer insisted. “My dearest moirail will not rest in his grave and I will not rest in my own until the Reverend is brought to justice.”

And so the two argued; for twelve days and twelve nights, they discussed at length what might be done about the Reverend, sharing in the Delphine’s food and, when that ran out, in the Devourer’s hunt; they slept on the same furs together. And in the mornings, when the Devourer woke up to find the Delphine’s breath against her neck and hair tangled in the furs, she came to realize that, though unintentional, a red romance had been begun that could not simply be left behind. The two had become inextricably bonded, certainly past what any brief fling would allow. The Devourer was certain that the Delphine was not as aware of the developing romantic feelings. The Devourer vowed to herself to remain silent about the burgeoning matespritship, in the hopes that the Delphine may never realize the nature of their feelings and that, should the Devourer have to leave again to continue her chase, only one heart would be broken.

Finally, the two came to a compromise: the Delphine would warn her moirail, and bring him to confront the Reverend; and as she did so, the Devourer would confront the Reverend with the option for legal process, with the understanding that if he attacked her, she was allowed to fight back. The two trecked back to the village together, again sharing each other’s food and bed, again remaining on the verge of consummating a matespritship.

Finally, the pair reached the entrance to the village; and, with a final, chaste kiss on the cheek, went their separate ways – the Delphine, towards her childhood home, and the Devourer, to the inn. However, when the Delphine reached her home, the Delegate – her dearest moirail – was nowhere to be found; she searched the whole town for him, and asked every troll she saw where he was, until finally she was told that he had been invited by the Reverend back to the inn. Fearing for the life of her closest kin and partner, the Delphine rushed to the inn.

But she was too late.

The Delegate sat, terrified, at the edge of the room. The Reverend was nowhere to be seen.

And in the middle, olive blood oozing in a mockery of tears, the Devourer’s body lay, beaten to death.

The Delphine collapsed near her love’s body; there was nothing to be done. She had already moved away from the world. But Delphine remembered her words well – the Devourer was not resting in her grave.

Delphine stripped the robe from her love and pulled it onto her own torso, giving the Devourer a final, desperate kiss of redemption, and pulled the body out into the yard to bury her, leaving the Delegate in the inn, ignoring as he begged her not to go. She buried the Devourer in the yard.

When her prayers were finished, she pulled the hood down over her eyes and took a new name; for the Devourer was no longer a corpse in the earth, but was instead a woman once known as the Delphine. It was no longer a woman seeking justice – it was justice; and if the Devourer died on the quest to avenge her lover and her lover’s lover, then her moirail would pick up the cause; and should he die, then others would take up the mantle; for there would always be those willing to take the hearts of unjust men and devour them whole.

The Huntress waited in her grave, and the Devourer took her steps into a new world.

**Author's Note:**

> finals are fuckin killing me and i was suddenly hit with both ancestors emotions and nepeta emotions so this is my excellent use of studying time. yolo
> 
> style is modelled largely after hans christian anderson, who is All About run-ons and ridiculously expositiony dialogue, so srry about that. gotta stick 2 the style. sorry if the description decieved u, i have no regrets
> 
> if the titles weren't clear, then this reference list may help:  
> The Delphine/The Devourer - Terezi  
> The Huntress/The Devourer - Nepeta  
> The Delegate - Sollux  
> The Reverend - Gamzee


End file.
